On Monday, Jeremy and I went into school and worked on the computer lab. The computer lab situation in our school is... non-existent. So we went in there and sawed off parts of the table to clear up space in the back. Just creating more space made things 100% better. In the past there was cardboard on the back window. We removed that to give the place more life. There is a counselor that works outta that room and she said that she's going to get a couch and curtains and now she's got space to do all that. Jeremy wanted to go in and do all this work but I focused him into working on just the one thing. It was a good thing too cause after we were all done and cleaned up, it was time for us to go.

After that, I went to do teacher observations. It was here that I realized how fucked up my school situation is. There is this stuff called "History alive" by the teachers' curriculum institute. It's all the stuff to help me teach the standards. Help me teach history. Overheads, games, writeups, etc. My friend John had mentioned it, but I didn't really get it until I went to do the observations. This history alive shit provides me with everything that I need to teach history. Fancy fucking that. Now I'm not saying that I'll just take this shit and not ever teach again. But I won't have to be reinventing the wheel constantly. I can have a structure and work around it. Right now, some of my biggest problems are the kids aren't reading the text or turning in homework. How the fuck am I supposed to get information across to the students? When I lecture I get feedback from the kids that they don't want so much lecture. Ok I hear that. But how am I going to get information across to them. I can have interactive games etc etc whatever. But I need to have information to go along with it. It's fucking driving me crazy. I'm trying to come up with shit to teach for 3 different classes. 2 of the classes this last quarter I never taught before. I was having trouble knowing all the info for students. I know my history but I don't know everything. I know. It's true. I said it. I don't know everything.

I would love to radically change my history class and teach history from the present backwards. I wonder if they would allow me to do that. I have to hit these things called standards... but come on. As interesting as the Phoenicians are, I could go my whole life and never know about them and nothing would radically change. It would be so much easier to hook kids into history if I could hook them into something contemporary to their lives. Hey want to know why the US is in Iraq? Want to know why India and Pakistan could drop nukes on each other over Jammu and Kashmir? Want to know why Hugo Chavez is calling Bush an asshole? Then I could break up the world into continents and focus on that. Teach world history that way. Fuck it I'm going to try it. I'm gonna call up Jeff and get his ok on it and try it that ways. I've always wanted to do it that way. We can't understand the present without understanding the past. But we also can't understand things unless we understand the present we are in. Wow I'm so fucking zen. LOL